New Players Guide to Divinity: Original Sin 2
New Players Guide to Divinity: Original Sin 2 Back to Guides and Tips. >>>>> GUIDE IS NOWHERE NEAR FINISHED YET! <<<<< Some things before it starts. I am no super elite mathematician so please don't expect crunched numbers to get the best min/max, this is a simple guide filled with simple information and with links to pages so that you can learn how things in the game work before you dive in. Due to the game being in early access expect things to possibly change over the course of the EA and after launch of DoS2. Before we begin.. You may want to go to Options > Gameplay and enable Edge-Panning, it just feels..right. Subtitles also may be helpful. Adjust other options to your liking. Character Creation We'll begin with the first thing a player really does, creates their character. Character Customization When creating your character you will be presented with a lot of options to adjust, the first selection you should make is which character you want to play as. DoS2 has 5 character options (at this moment in time(EA)) Sebille, The Red Prince, Ifan Ben-Mezd and Lohse, each of them have their own unique stories and personalities along with unique personal quests that can only be gotten by playing as one of them. The fifth option is to play as a custom character, you will have no personal story like the other 4, but you get better customization and the character will feel more your own compared to playing as a pre-made. The custom can play as any of the races. Note that there is currently no playable companion that is a dwarf, only the custom character may be a dwarf. It should also be noted that, even though this seems obvious, if you play as a pre-made character that one will not be in the world for you to have as a companion and the other three will be. Choosing a race to play Humans Humans are an all around balanced race like in any game, they rarely excel at anything, but are good for everything. However, due to their bonuses in Wits and Critical Chance, they make excellent Rogues, Shadowblades or Rangers. With a free point in Leadership and their innate ability Encourage, having at least one in the party is near essential for the buffs they give. Lizards Lizards excel at caster roles such as Wizards, Witches and Enchanters due to their innate Intelligence boost due to Sophisticated, they also have Spellsong which grants them a free Persuasion point. The Lizard race has an ability called Dragon's Blaze which is a low cost, low damage, cone shaped fire field. Dwarves Dwarves get an innate bonus to Strength and Sneaking, they make for powerful Fighters or Knights and along with their innate ability Metamorph, which allows them to turn a target into stone via Petrification Dwarfs make for great warriors or tanks, they also get a sneaking bonus, but a warrior role seems better suited to them. Metamorph is free CC which can at times prove very useful. Elves Elves, in my opinion, are the best by a lore standpoint as Corpse Eater allows you to consume body parts which are free heals, they give you backstory to the person the limb belonged to and most importantly they give you free spells when you consume certain body parts. Flesh Sacrifice is also a good damage boost, especially combined with Haste. Undead Undead are currently unknown on all fronts and will be updated when they are released. After selecting the character you want to play as fiddle with their looks until you are happy with how they look. For this guide any reference to the player will be as if they are playing a custom character. Tags If you have selected to play as a custom character you will need to select your character's tags. Tags help define who a character is and how they interact with things and people in the world. Below your character's class selection you will see a box that says Tags, under it is another box that has a few empty spaces along with two tags already filled out that state the character you are and race. Select manage and this will take you to a list of tags to select. They are the following. * Soldier * Scholar * Noble * Barbarian * Jester * Mystic * Rogue Tags most often interact with dialogue from NPCs and can assist you in getting new information, I suggest you try talking to NPCs using multiple characters in your party as they can use their tags to get more information if it is applicable to the NPC you are interacting with. Class Selection Now you will want to choose what class you want to play as, please know that classes are merely templates, with adding points elsewhere during leveling you can be anything you want, however classes due dictate starting stats and skills so you should pick something you will want to build into. I will break down the classes here in an info box to help you get an idea of what they are and you can follow the links to learn more. Stat Adjustment DoS2 uses a fairly simple stat system made up of the following stats.. Strength, Finesse, Intelligence, Constitution, Memory and Wits. For more details click the stat to go to the stat's page. For the shorter version here is how the stats work. Strength - Determines damage dealt with Strength weapons and provides a bonus to Physical Armor. Finesse - Determines damage dealt with Finesse weapons, Daggers, Bows and X-Bows, also provides a bonus to Dodging. Intelligence - Determines magical damage and bonus to Magical Armor. Constitution - Hitpoints. Memory - How many spells you can use at one time. Recommend you look at the memory page for this stat. Wits - Critical chance and initiative, also helps detect traps and treasure. Abilities Abilities are broken into two categories Combat and Civic. Combat abilities determine weapon proficiency, defensive proficiency and spell proficiency. Civic abilities determine your proficiency when interacting with NPCs using Persuasion and Bartering; Lucky Charm can increase the rarity of loot you find; Loremaster allows you to identify items; Telekinesis 'allows you to grab things from a distance; 'Sneak 'makes it easier to move unnoticed by NPCs and 'Thievery lets you steal more items from NPCs. You are awarded Combat points every level and Civic points every (currently unknown) level. Learn more about Attributes and Abilities here. Talent Selection Talents are varied in their affects, some give you more resistances while lowering others, some introduce new mechanics to think about when engaging combat situations. An example would be my favorite talent, Glass Cannon, it allows a character to start combat with full Action Points, but the trade-off is that their armor, both magical and physical, no longer block special effects. Say you get hit by Battering Ram, normally the physical armor could block the knockdown effect, but with Glass Cannon you no longer can block it. The list of talents is fairly large and will most likely increase by more before launch/at launch so I will put a link here so you may read up on them individually. Some of my favorites however are Glass Cannon, listed above in the example. Pet Pal which allows you to speak to animals and while not useful for anything else but speaking to them I find it a nearly required talents to take as animals sometimes can give you quests, rewards or tips that you wouldn't have gotten without them. The Pawn allows you to move the distance of 1 Action Point for free at the start of that characters turn, extremely useful for positioning and shouldn't be underestimated. Gathering your party Divinity: Original Sin 2, currently, contains 4 possible companions if you do not select to play as one of them during character creation. Note that as of v3.0.31.292 on 2/2/2017 we may now select what class the companions should be upon recruitment of them, thus you should pick the companions you want because you like them and not because of necessity, this also allows more flexibility when creating your own character as you will not run into the problem of missing out on a key role. Combat and using the environment to your advantage While using the environment to your advantage is hardly anything new to RPG games, the way DoS2 uses them makes them far more vital when assessing a combat situation and manipulating them to your advantage can prove to be of far more significance than you realize. The three pillars of combat, in my opinion, are Status Effects, E'nvironmental Effects' and Height. We'll start with status effects. Status Effects Status effects are much like they are in most games, however, in DoS2 inspecting your environment and making use of status effect inducing abilities are one of the key aspects of combat compared to the usual one stun and burst down. Below you can see a list of statuses, what causes them and how they interact with other things. Environmental Effects Environmental effects cover a wide range of things, to begin with note that I will call sources of these things Fields. There are a great many ways to create, clear and make use of environmental effects in DoS2, many of which are from spells and consumable equipment like bombs and arrows. To gloss over a few we have Fire fields, Water fields, Poison fields, Oil fields, Ice fields, Smoke fields, etc, each with their own special properties, uses and sources. Lets go over some of the most common you will encounter. Fire fields in my opinion are the most common as they are produced by basically anything that has a fire effect. They cause burning on targets and interact very nastily with Poison and Oil fields by creating massive explosions (poison fields) or spreading rapidly into a large area with Oil fields. They can be put out by a Water field, spells like Rain or ice spells can put them out, however note that you are creating a brand new battlefield by doing so which will segue into the next one. Water fields, the second most common, created by spells like Rain or water kegs being destroyed. These water fields can put out fire fields and spread water fields, but at the cost of soaking everything nearby turning the battlefield into an electric playground. Casting most Aero spells at anything inside the water field will cause an Electrified field which stuns anything inside of it until the field is destroyed. This applies to weapons with an electric damage type, like wand's basic attacks. Oil fields, now these are often encountered and in my opinion the most deadly. Oil fields will slow any characters inside raising the AP cost of moving dramatically and most importantly setting up a prime area for a massive Fire field which can decimate your party, or the enemies, very quickly. Poison fields alone are not the most deadly, the poison is more an irritant, but in combination with a Fire field it is, if only barely, the second most deadly field combination. Fire and Poison create an explosion that can wipe out a whole party in one sweep and if it doesn't kill them in one go it will Poison and set them aflame with hardly a sliver of Hitpoints left. Kegs You'll often come across kegs laying around some places, on most occasions they indicate an encounter is possible or likely in the area and they are there for you or your enemy to make use of. These can vary in what they contain, but the most often you'll see are Oil, Water and Poison. As of the AI 2.0 patch enemies now clearly recognize and seek to use kegs against the player's party, with this in mind you should stop and analyze what barrels are where and decide to eliminate them before the fight, re-position them for your benefit or remove them from battle completely. Kegs can turn the tide of fights for or against you and should never be ignored under any circumstance. They can also be taken with you and used at a later time, although they weigh around 60kg and takes up half if not more than half of a characters weight limit. Height Height is a mix of what you'd expect and what you didn't expect. Naturally you are out of range for melee attacks and it costs the enemy more to get to you, but unlike most games it gives you an actual bonus to range allowing something that is say 5m range to be 8m range and alongside that you get a bonus to damage if you are higher than the enemy, Huntsman can raise this with points. The advantage is nothing to scoff at either, it can be a deciding factor in battles and should be scouted for in advance. However being significantly lower than the enemy will not only block your abilities pathing, it will also reduce your damage by 20% of more due to the height difference. Category:Divinity: Original Sin 2 gameplay